Aspects of this disclosure relate generally to telecommunications, and more particularly to interference mitigation and the like.
A wireless communication network may be deployed to provide various types of services (e.g., voice, data, multimedia services, etc.) to users within a coverage area of the network. In some implementations, one or more access points (e.g., corresponding to different cells) provide wireless connectivity for access terminals (e.g., cell phones) that are operating within the coverage of the access point(s). In some implementations, peer devices provide wireless connectively for communicating with one another.
Communication between devices in a wireless communication network may be subject to interference. For a communication from a first network device to a second network device, emissions of radio frequency (RF) energy by a nearby device may interfere with reception of signals at the second network device. For example, a Long Term Evolution (LTE) device operating in an unlicensed RF band that is also being used by a Wi-Fi device may experience significant interference from the Wi-Fi device, and/or can cause significant interference to the Wi-Fi device.
Over-the-air interference detection is employed in some wireless communication networks in an attempt to mitigate such interference. For example, a device may periodically monitor (e.g., sniff) for energy in the RF band used by the device. Upon detection of any kind of energy, the device may back-off the RF band for a period of time.
In practice, however, there may be problems with such a back-off or “listen-before-talk” (LBT) approach, at least in its conventional implementation. For example, for an LTE system operating in an unlicensed band with a Wi-Fi co-channel scenario where it is desired to avoid interference from Wi-Fi, the detected energy in the band might not be from a Wi-Fi device, or might not be substantial. In addition, the detected energy in the band may simply be adjacent channel leakage. Consequently, an LTE device may back off transmissions in the band even when there is no Wi-Fi interference.